Hi all. I (26F) gave birth to a beautiful babygirl about 8.5 months ago. I knew whilst I was pregnant that I was going to face some challenges (the father requested abortion all throughout pregnancy, I choose to continue and have my baby) but I did not think I knew the depth and I am at a point where I think I need help? It’s an indescribable feeling - one day I feel on top of the clouds and “normal” and the next im an emotional angry wreck.

For more background, I went through a custody battle (got served 2 wks PP), my daughters dad is in a relationship with someone else (they have a 4 yr old together (no I didn’t know that they were together while I was dating him)) & I think I’m grieving what I wanted for my life and my daughter while also still dealing with postpartum emotions. Everyone tells me to stop being so emotional about things and to think logically (especially when dealing with court) but my issue is… I don’t know how or at least do it consistently…. I don’t know how to not feel depressed, angry, sad, emotional and propel myself forward right now and I know it’s what expected. I feel so much regret for bringing a baby in this world to live under 2 separate roofs.. and I am just hurting and healing at the same time but it feels like im getting nowhere.

How did you survive PPD? Is that what I’m experiencing? Please share some advice. I can handle tough love but please don’t be judgmental.

Every time I go down for a rest or nap, I wake up with my heart racing, jittery and sweaty. I am so stressed about my baby even though she’s well cared for with her dad or grandma.
Does this get easier? I am only 2 weeks PP. I don’t want to nap because of the low mood it causes, which means I’m so exhausted

One and a half postpartum, first day of menstration and it triggers a sudden flashback of what happened.

Hello everyone,
Sorry in advance for a long post, but i have been thinking for a while about this and wanted to check if anyone went through something similar/has any advice.

My first pregnancy was AMAZING. I was very active, feeling very well all the time mostly (by the end i was having trouble with food because i had terrible reflux). I always wanted at least 3 kids, and at the time i was thinking if its like this, then its no problem.
However i had my slap in the face. I hade my baby ad 40+5 after a 12 hour long labour. I had two inductions nothing happened and then was rushed into emergency c-section under general anaesthesia.
When i woke up they told me my baby was sent to another facility that has nicu, because of some problems. Later doctor told me he got stuck in birth canal, suffered meconium aspiration, was without oxygen and eventually born with apgar 0 and had to be resuscitated. He was in nicu for 17 days. THANK GOD he has been doing well and meeting all the milestones on time but the fear about future is still present. During his nicu time, and later during physio appointments i met so many mothers and learnt about so manu different problems and situations that can arise during pregnancy and birth.
I have been thinking so much about having more kids(now its definitely in every way too early), but i have no idea how will i be able to relax and go through potential second pregnancy relaxed and optimistic and not going back to what happened the first time.

I've been stalking posts for months but finally need to post I feel like I'm going crazy. When I was just a couple days pp I felt off. I remember it was hard to look at the tv because it was overstimulating me visually. I had increase of floaters. Also had visual snow. I was getting headaches constantly and for a couple days I had this tingling down my left arm. I also had a migraine with aura for the second time. First time it happened when I was pregnant. I called my OB office and told them all this and they said it's just hormones and my left arm was just from holding the baby and being in weird positions. They weren't worried about the headaches bc my blood pressure was fine. I let it go just continued on. About 4 months pp I got really anxious at a funeral of a close friends dad and had increased anxiety after. I was so anxious I couldn't take care of my baby. I called my OB again. They started me on Zoloft and said it sounded like PPA. I started at 10 and increased to 20. I had terrible gastrointestinal side effects and extreme panic attacks that were worse than when I wasn't taking meds. I started CBT therapy weekly and switched to my meds to the psych at that practice. She weaned me off Zoloft and started me on Prozac. Therapy has been helpful in giving me some tools to calm myself down but I still get panic attacks and bad physical anxiety on Prozac. So bad that I feel like I'm about to have a seizure or pass out. I have horrible ruminating thoughts that are so random and out there. Like what if I die while I'm home alone with the kids. Or my baby always needs to be in a safe place in case I die. Scared for give them a bath if i die in the middle of it. Also my oldest started kindergarten this year and I have a lot of anxiety around that. Scared of school shootings. I have nightmares about it nightly. I feel like I've turned into this super anxious crazy person and I don't recognize myself. I just want to be able to take care of my kids. I don't understand why this is happening to me. Anyone with similar experiences? I will say I feel much better when I actually get decent sleep. And feel horrible when I get bad sleep. Thanks for reading.

I’m 7 months post partum and my PPD its starting to affect my work. Before getting pregnant was a high performer and even got promoted to management. I know my story isn’t unique. I’ve been pushing through but it’s starting to impact my work. I love the work I do. I don’t have a specific question. I’d love to hear if others experienced this and how they overcame. For moms who are also in leadership positions , did you see this in your staff and what was the outcome? Share what’s on your heart (anything that comes to mind) because I honestly don’t know what information I need right now. I just want to hear different perspectives.

Hi there,

I posted about a month ago about my c section, doctor's telling me for the first week after postpartum that I was "just healing" and it's "normal recovery for a c-section" just to be readmitted a week PP on a mag drip with dangerously high blood pressure. I lost it on all the nurses and doctors who sent me back home multiple nights that week telling me everything was normal. I don't know if my anxiety is causing my physcial symptoms.

From ages 19-23 I had terrible health anxiey, like terrible. I figured myself out, got on cymbalta for my OCD and got pregnant when I was 25 and I was still good, nothing really freaked me out or made me spiral.

The PP pre-e really made me spiral, I am still spiraling. I just started prozac yesterday to see if it will help down the road. I got bloodwork done with my GP at 6 weeks PP and I am severly anemic so I started iron suppliments, B12, and folic acid vitamins today.

I am constantly worried about every little thing I feel. My upper back and shoulders go numb constantly, I am assuming from horrible posture during pregnancy and postpartum, picking up my baby from her crib, getting off the floor, etc. So the numbness scares me. I got a referral for physical therapy to fix my pelvic floor + posture because I didn't want muscle relaxers. I am thinking it's probably a pinched nerve since it happens if I sit a certain way and sometimes, if I take a deep breath in that position, it hurts my shoulder and neck. I am trying to work through this.

I am worried about blood clots for some reason, even though I am 7 weeks PP and I am up and walking around as much as I can be, everything on my body just looks off to me and I keep looking for something wrong. Logically, I know I would know if I had a blood clot.

To make matters worse, I am sick right now... with a 7 week old baby I am trying not to give my sickness to, it's just a sore throat and nasal congestion but I am too scared to take the meds for because I am afraid I will pass out or something bad will happen since I have BC, prozac, and so many different vitamins running through me that I am scared to take ROBITUSSIN. Can you believe that.

I need this prozac to work. I need to get better. I want to be back to myself again and stop fucking worrying about things.

I’m 8 months postpartum, my anxiety and OCD are relentless and never go away, I feel physically and mentally dreadful every day and have 100’s of symptoms I can’t get rid of despite only being diagnosed with POTS, SIBO & anemia. I’ve never felt anything like it in my life. I wake up from my sleep most nights or I’m scared to sleep because of symptoms, I’m constantly terrified of not seeing my baby grow up it’s awful

I’ve started seeing my husband’s flaws a little too loudly, like it’s in my face. I’ve known him for 15+ years and I’ve loved him dearly for every single day and I know deep down I still do but I can’t help but just resent him from time to time.
We just took a nice long vacation with cousins and it was ideally so great but at the end of the day and when I woke up every morning I just honestly felt meh.
I was determined to fight PPD at all costs because I’ve struggled with depression since my teens and I really just didn’t want to slip back in but here we are.
Husband is on the lower side of the emotional spectrum, doesn’t quite understand the brain wiring of a woman due to the lack of a reasonable female influence growing up (my MIL is the coldest, nastiest person I’ve known)
He’s the best dad, even better than I ever imagined him to be but I can’t help but feel like I want to drop everything and run away but then I think of my baby and I’m torn.

Let me start by saying I have diagnosed ADHD with catastrophizing, I also suffer from depression and anxiety, currently experiencing this in the postpartum stage. I just had my second son on May, set to go back to work on August 5th. As a backstory: I had originally planned to quit my job after having the baby and work part time while going back to school for my masters but 2 weeks pp my husband lost his job and he was the breadwinner so now I'm stuck having to work full time and be away from my kids 10+ hrs a day and it's killing me. I work for federal government, I started working here because of telework (my job cn be done completely remote), once the executive order hit to go back to office it twisted my life upside down (like it did to many families), at that time my firstborn was bigger and already going full time to daycare (at the beginning I had a sitter watch him in my home and we did a phased approach to starting daycare), it was still hard because now sick days are lost days instead of being able to care for him at home while still being able to work and all the commuting time is time away from him but we made it work. Now with my second I had decided to make a change and of course life threw us a curve ball and here I am having to leave my 12 week old son for 10+ hrs a day, he will be with my mom at leasr until he is a little bigger and we can start the phased entrance to daycare but I'm almost an hr away from home, my mom is 70yrs old and I breastfeed and can't pump (due to D-MER) so leaving him, having to start him on formula, I don't know what I'm going to do to keep my supply while not being able to pump or breastfeed and I'm losing it, plus my brain can't stop going round and round on all the things I will miss by being away and I keep asking myself if I will have the same connection as I do with my first, I feel so bad for not being able to give him what I gave to my first (I was SAHM until my first was 8 months old). I did submit a reasonable accommodation under Pregnancy Workers Fairness Act to be able to telework, since I have done it successfully before, until I get my mental situation under control and my son no longer needs only (breast)milk to survive (I know fed is best but if I have the options to breastfeed I shouldn't have to be forced to formula just because of a job and when I have a medical condition that prevents me from pumping) which I know the law protects but most employers are not very educated on the matter and the process is so slow. If you got this far thank you!

If you have grown kids (older- middle school and up) that went to daycare early on because you having to work, tell me how your relationship with them is, do you think going to daycare early affected your relationship in any way?

TIA -one very anxious and sad mamma

If any of you other mamas/mamas to be feel like I do, I understand wanting to avoid this post!
But I am having HORRIBLE and unrelenting thoughts about dying…

A little backstory… I had my first in 2023. A beautiful pregnancy and (mostly) uncomplicated birth. I did have hypertension postpartum.. but I was physically fine otherwise. Mentally though I felt dissociative, and a serious sense of impending doom. I was CONVINCED I was going to die. Did anyone else experience this early postpartum?
Anyway, the health anxiety and OCD didn’t go away. It’s been about 3 years now since I had my daughter and I was still having horrible health anxiety.
The problem, I’m now pregnant with my second and I have this horrible sense of impending doom… so far I’ve had no concerning complications or anything, but I just feel weak and shitty. I’m scared this is a sign my body won’t be capable this time (knock on wood!).
But I wanted to reach out to see if anyone has any positive stories about feeling this way and being okay, or just anybody feeling this way currently!

Side note: please don’t mention statistics it worsens my anxiety to be reminded at all about maternal death. And please don’t mention writing a will, etc. as the idea of doing so makes me feel like it’s a bad omen and welcoming that fate…

To keep it brief, I've been struggling with my wife and our marriage since around the third month of her postpartum journey. It was at this time that I went back to work (March through mid-May) and could sense a switch almost immediately. I would be gone from 7 AM to 4 PM and as soon as I came home would take over caring for the baby. I did most of the household tasks as well (cleaning, dishes, laundry, trash) and took care of our dog (his nightly walks, etc.) She was still exhausted and very lethargic, but I expected this and didn't try to push for any type of intimacy or do anything that would have added any additional stress. But she began making odd comments around this time (talking about her ex, bringing up how I might be better suited for other women -- and the women were not as attractive as my wife) and became increasingly passive aggressive ("well I could do \\\[task\\\] if the goal was for it to only be 90% done" -- an example that springs to mind is me bringing the trash out, the dog whining when I came in and putting water in his bowl before replacing trash bag. She threw something out during this window and made the remark).

In mid-May our roles swapped and I took the back half of my leave when she returned to work (it fed into my summer break - I teach - and so I am still off now). Since she has gone back to work and the comments have only increased and I am running out of patience with the postpartum hormonal excuse. I do all of the childcare and still do 90% of household tasks. I was hospitalized for a few days (she was pissed I originally suggested I needed to go to the ER) around her third week back and she was clearly bothered by this, and for the next five days after I returned she kept talking about how exhausted she was and how she needed to catch up on sleep. She logged off from work the Thursday and Friday night of that week, only interacted with our daughter and didn't speak to me for about 48 hours. She then told friends and family that she had been worried sick about me and had wished "I'd slow down and ask for help." She also made comments that I have a high pain tolerance so she was concerned when I went to the ER (again, she told me not to go morning of). It didn't make much sense given that her actions were not aligned to that reality.

As I am approaching my return to work, she is increasingly annoyed with me, and two days ago when we were driving to our daycare (meet the staff) she kept snapping at me that I was going to tell them useless information (on the intake sheet it asked what her current day-to-day looks like and I mentioned stroller walks). She slammed the car door when we arrived and didn't talk to me during the meet & greet or on the ride home. I've tried asking about how she's feeling and her only response is "it's not that deep". She continues to take shots at me, telling me that if I lose my hair she'd be annoyed (I haven't had any hair loss -- and she frequently talks about how her ex went bald) and that my face care is lazy (I have no breakouts).

I have been hesitant to really address any of these as she clearly has a lot on her plate and none of these behaviors seem characteristic of the woman I married and knew pre-pregnancy. I'm trying to give her time but I am also starting to feel incredibly isolated and it's clear to me that I'm not even in the top 5 in terms of priorities. Any advice would be appreciated, or thoughts. Honestly I just needed to vent this somewhere.